


We Are Not Shining Stars

by enigma731



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fake Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Natasha Romanov-centric, POV Natasha Romanov, Polyamory, Post-Civil War, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6637426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>That people might have to die in order to protect the future is a reality Natasha has long accepted. It’s practically been the basis of her training, her work, in each incarnation of her life. She just isn’t used to those people being the ones she loves.</em>
</p><p>Speculative Civil War aftermath, in which the cost isn't quite what anyone has thought. (No spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Not Shining Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my favorite things I've ever written, even though it's also been one of the hardest to write. I've had the idea in my head for months, but dropped everything to do it when I realized that I was running out of time before Civil War actually came out and took away the opportunity. 
> 
> This is a story about grief, change, and purpose. It's also about what happens when nobody handles a terrible situation particularly well, and about how sometimes you have to forgive the people that you love for doing some pretty dysfunctional things (or not). I'm not listing specific warnings, but I will say there are some pretty dark themes here. If you want additional details before reading, feel free to contact me here or [on tumblr](http://enigma731.tumblr.com/ask). 
> 
> I realize that this subject matter is different from my usual, and is probably catering to a niche audience. But I hope you'll keep an open mind and give it a try. 
> 
> Infinite thanks to everyone who encouraged me and helped me hash this out over the past few weeks. I could not have done it without every single one of you who supported me.

When it happens, Natasha isn’t surprised.

She’s spent the past few months with the bottom falling out, watching her team come apart, her friends become bitter enemies. She’s made her choices, burned her bridges, decided where she has to stand. That people might have to die in order to protect the future is a reality she’s long accepted. It’s practically been the basis of her training, her work, in each incarnation of her life. She just isn’t used to those people being the ones she loves.

She’s imagined Clint’s death more times over the years than she can count. It was strategic, at first. New to the country, to S.H.I.E.L.D., and to friendship, having a plan to take him out at any given moment had seemed a necessity. Later, as he’d wormed his way relentlessly into her heart, she’d tried to use his mortality as a barrier, a precaution against true attachment. And then, after all her stubborn resolve had crumbled, she’d pictured it in the small hours of the morning, lying in between him and Laura, imagining what it would be like to go on by herself, alone again after knowing the alternative.

When Clint dies, it happens more or less the way she’s always imagined it would--in the midst of a fight too big for them to handle, doing something reckless in an effort to save civilians. She isn’t there to see, is busy with her own people’s survival, but she doesn’t need to--she’s watched this same scenario play out on the backs of her eyelids enough to last a lifetime and then some.

When Clint dies, the thing that surprises her is that the world doesn’t stop, her resolve doesn’t shatter. Instead, she thinks of all the things that will need to be done now, and exhaustion begins to seep through the adrenaline of battle.

* * *

It feels unfair that Natasha gets to board a commercial jet and fly directly to Iowa when all of it is over.

It should be a victory, she thinks--She’s gotten what she’s been fighting for, though it’s hard for her cynical side to believe that a world with more accountability will ever really be possible to achieve. 

It seems unjust, that she should be allowed--expected, really--to just resume her life in a rough approximation of what it was before when she’s had as big a role in all of the damage as anyone else has. When Steve is in prison, awaiting trial, and Sam is barred from any future work with his fellow veterans, at least in any sort of official capacity. When Clint, and Wanda, and so many others whose names she will never know are dead.

It’s then, watching the city below turn to late-summer green fields beneath a treacherously cloudless sky, that she feels the first first sharp tendrils of grief sink their claws into the pit of her stomach.

* * *

Laura meets her at the doorway of the old white house, the latest places where Clint patched up the porch still too bright and new to blend in, though it’s been a few months already. 

Natasha hasn’t called ahead, couldn’t find the words to say on the phone. Instead she texted the flight information, which she knows probably tipped Laura off to the fact that _something_ isn’t right, though she doesn’t think there’s any way to be prepared for just how big a blow this is going to be.

The walk up the path has never felt quite so long, or the world quite so deceiving. It’s a beautiful day, but the only thing on Natasha’s mind is how she’s finally bringing the reality of death to this place, an unbreached, impossible sanctuary for so many years. And never again. 

“Hi,” says Laura, when Natasha finally reaches the top of the porch steps, leans in to kiss her like Clint’s absence isn’t already a gaping chasm in the air between them. It isn’t the first time she’s come home alone. But now, thinks Natasha, it’s the only one that will ever matter.

“There was a fight,” says Natasha, the words clean and carefully measured in her mouth, like it hasn’t already been all over the news. “In Berlin. You’ve probably already heard that part, but it--A lot of people died.”

Laura says nothing, just nods curtly.

“There isn’t--” Natasha breaks off, suddenly isn’t sure how she’s expected this part to go. “There aren’t any remains. Not for a lot of them.”

“Okay,” says Laura, still clipped, too clam.

“Did you hear me?” Natasha presses, because nothing about this feels right.

Laura nods again. “Did you see?”

She bites the inside of her lip, shakes her head.

“Okay,” Laura repeats. Then, “You should come inside. I’ve got lunch on the table.”

* * *

A month passes in the sort of artificial tranquility that makes Natasha’s skin crawl. Laura has always been a creature of habit, clinging to routines when her life threatens to descend into chaos, attacking the darkness of the world by trying to fill it up with warmth and pretty things.

Natasha has watched her get by on it before, when Clint was away or struggling, has even envied her the ability in the past. But now it feels wrong, watching her cook meal after meal, press flowers with the kids, buy them colorful supplies for the first day of school. There’s a desperation to it, Natasha thinks, but she’s not sure she has the strength to face the consequences of breaking through the facade.

“Is that for Dad?” asks Lila, when Natasha brings them home to find Laura baking her third lemon poundcake in ten days, more sugar than she’s probably allowed the kids to have in the previous three months combined.

Laura hesitates, the pain catching in her eyes for a moment, but she’s nothing if not determined to push through. “If it was for him, I’d be making chocolate. But I’m sure he’d tell you to enjoy a piece in his place.”

“And you’d tell him not to teach us make unhealthy choices,” says Cooper, a little edge of challenge in his voice.

“No,” Laura answers calmly. “I’m going to tell you that you’d better go get started on homework now if you want to enjoy your dinner and your cake later.”

Natasha watches them head up the stairs, waits for the sounds of their footfalls to fade before she speaks. “They’re going to figure it out, you know. There’s nothing you can do that will protect them forever.”

Laura turns away to put the cake into the oven, shuts the door with more force than strictly necessary. “Could you start cleaning the chicken, please? I’m going to do the veggies.”

* * *

Natasha doesn’t sleep.

It’s hardly a new experience, lying in this bed and listening to the house shift, almost like it’s breathing. But tonight it isn’t memories marching across the backs of her eyelids, isn’t the half-forgotten voices of the ghosts she created in another lifetime whispering back to steal away her sleep. 

Tonight it’s thoughts of a future just like today: too light, too soft. A feather that might simply blow away at any moment, leaving an abyss in its place. She doesn’t know which feels more cruel--sitting back like this, waiting for the illusion to shatter, or doing it herself, just to know exactly when and how.

She rolls away from Laura, who appears to be impossibly restful, though Natasha’s not sure she believes it. Clint’s side of the big king bed is cool to the touch, of course, but the sensation sends a deep ache stabbing through her core all the same. Natasha rests her head in the middle of his pillow, so old it’s gone flat as a pancake, though Clint’s refused for years to replace it. 

She focuses for a long moment on the smell of the linens, trying to find the scent of his aftershave or the sweetness of sun-drenched grass that clings to him after he’s spent the afternoon shooting in the barn. There’s no trace now, though--It’s been weeks since he slept here, never knowing that it would be the last.

* * *

The season’s first cold front blows in from the north, turning the sky green, the inky black tongues of funnel clouds licking the horizon. The school closes at noon, leaving the kids huddled at the windows, naively excited by the prospect of going down to the basement.

“I have to go,” says Laura, oversized duffel bag already slung over her body. “The hospital is going to need me to get there before the injuries start rolling in. You good here?”

Natasha nods; she’s been expecting this. _These_ are the moments when Laura gets to be a hero, though her everyday practice involves saving people for miles around too. It’s just that sore throats and broken toes are a lot less dramatic than the injuries that will come with these storms.

They get lucky this time, and things on the farm stay quiet, though the next town over isn’t as fortunate. It’s well after dark, the wind outside having died down, when Natasha hears the sound of quiet, cautious footsteps coming toward the bedroom. The kids have been down for nearly two hours, but Natasha isn’t entirely surprised.

She sits up in bed, switches on the night light they keep around for bad dreams. Lila pauses for a moment in the doorway and Natasha freezes, wondering if she’s expected to find her mother--her _actual_ mother, who’s still in town, trying to save a man who’s been crushed under a fallen wall of his house. She crosses the room the rest of the way, though, crawls into the bed and curls up in the crook of Natasha’s arm, her small body warm despite the weather outside, the drafts in the big house.

“Hi,” Natasha breathes, carding her fingers into Lila’s hair. “Did the storm wake you up?”

Lila shakes her head. “I was thinking--Do you think Dad is out in the rain?”

Natasha feels her stomach clench, silently berates herself for failing to see this coming. “No, baby. I’m sure he’s not.”

Lila nods, then starts abruptly to cry. “He’s not coming back, is he? Not ever.”

“He’s not,” Natasha breathes, her own throat tight and her eyes stinging. “He’s not coming back.”

Helplessly, she hugs Lila closer, cursing the fact that she has no idea how to do this.

* * *

It isn’t quite dawn when Natasha hears the sound of Laura’s truck crawling up the drive, but she’s already dressed, half feels as if she ought to have one of her own emergency overnight bags with her as well. She resists that temptation, though, knows that if she acts on it, she’ll be gone for good.

Instead she slips out the back door, into the still-falling rain, and takes off at a run toward the empty field.

Laura finds her two hours later, dragging the chopped-up remains of a downed tree into the barn for firewood.

“How dare you,” she says without pretense, the anger flashing in her eyes like lightning. “You had no right.”

Natasha straightens, wipes her hands on her pants. “No, I didn’t. But you gave me no choice.”

It’s almost a relief to see something on Laura’s face besides stubborn tranquility.

* * *

“Tell me what happened,” Laura finally says that night. They’ve both been lying awake this time, the silence between them suffocating.

Natasha takes a breath, tries to find the words she’s imagined saying so many times over the past few weeks.

“We were in Berlin,” she says finally. “At the airport. It was peak travel time, civilians everywhere. Not ever--Not how I’d ever wanted it to go.”

Laura swallows audibly, rolls over to face her.

“There was a fight,” Natasha continues, and the words themselves feel exhausted on her lips. “I didn’t--I hadn’t spoken to any of them. For weeks. But Wanda was--she was never really the same, after her brother died.” She pauses, knows that Laura never knew Wanda before--not that any of them really did. “She lost control. Of her powers. I don’t know exactly how, but she and a lot of other people died.”

“Clint was trying to help her?” Laura asks.

“I think so,” says Natasha, then reconsiders. “I _know_ so.”

“Idiot,” Laura whispers, and finally starts to cry.

* * *

Laura spends a week debating the question of a memorial service. It’s more complicated than it ought to be -- there isn’t a body, and the idea of burying an empty coffin feels artificial to the point of shame. Besides, there’s the fact that Laura and the children can’t publicly be associated with Clint, not with his true identity, especially not now, after the war. Memorializing a cover seems more painful than doing nothing at all. Safer to avoid questions from Laura’s patients, from the rest of the town, altogether.

“Do you think he would have minded?” asks Laura, the day after the decision’s been made, officially, to do nothing. They’re in the middle of folding the spare top sheet for the big king bed, Laura’s face half-obscured behind it as she carefully matches corners.

“No,” says Natasha, folding her own half before passing it over. “I think Clint would tell you he never expected to be memorialized, or even remembered.”

“I know,” says Laura, her voice breaking. “But he _deserves_ it, and I want him to know that. I want him to know I believe it.”

Natasha swallows, puts her arms around Laura, the sheet crushed between them.

* * *

“What are you going to do now?” Laura asks, in the darkness. 

She and Natasha are lying in bed together, well after midnight, though neither of them is having much luck finding sleep. Natasha thought that might change, with time, but it’s been months now and the insomnia is still around. The cruelest part of it all is that, in the hazy predawn hours, she finds herself wishing instinctively for the solid warmth of Clint’s body, the familiar anchor of his voice in her ear, pulling her away from the free-fall of nightmares. Only now, it’s his absence that’s stolen her sleep in the first place, and that nightmare isn’t going to end.

“Now?” Natasha echoes, mostly because she doesn’t have an answer just yet, or at least not one she’s prepared to put into words. 

She’s still an Avenger, at least in theory, and an agent of the United States Government, both things she’s been in the past. Technically, it’s still her responsibility to protect the world, when called on in official capacity to do so. Then again, she’s also still the assassin whose darkest moments are now freely available on the internet. She’s still one of the faces that’s been all over the news, steeped in controversy, for the past six months. The world hasn’t forgotten that and the calls for her help aren’t coming. She’s gotten what she believed was needed for the good of the future, and now she’s got the rest of her life to live with it.

“You know what I mean,” says Laura, in the tone that says she knows bullshit evasive tactics when she sees them in conversation. 

Natasha sighs heavily. “I’m here.”

“For how long?” Laura presses, and for the first time, Natasha hears the uncertainty in her voice, wonders if that’s what’s been keeping her up tonight.

The doubt stings, though it’s not like Natasha can blame her. It’s also not like she doesn’t have her own version of it--that without Clint, she might not fit here anymore. What she has to offer on her own might not be enough.

“We’ll see,” she says finally, and tries to shut out the way her words hang heavily in the darkness.

* * *

The first snow comes late, just a couple of days before Christmas. It’s light and wet, more muddy than anything else, but it’s still enough excitement to get the kids out of the house.

Clint’s things have been quietly disappearing, which is impressive, given that it’s not like Natasha’s got many distractions to prevent her from observing the process. Still, when she gets out of the shower to find Laura putting up the Christmas decorations, a few very specific boxes of ornaments set aside, it’s the first time Natasha’s managed to catch her in the act.

“What are you going to do with these?” She asks, holding up a set of hideously kitschy things Clint’s brought back from airports all over the world.

Laura glances up, the movements slow and deliberate. “I don’t know, donate them, maybe.”

“Why?” Natasha asks sharply. “Are they just garbage now?”

Laura blinks. “Not--garbage, but we’re _not_ going to put them up. They’re just going to be upsetting.”

“I would _like_ to be a part of these decisions,” Natasha snaps, anger flaring hot in the pit of her stomach. “I loved him too, you know that. You don’t get to just _erase_ him from our lives. Or am I not actually a part of this family too?”

“ _Are_ you?” asks Laura, angry now too. “Are you really, Nat? Because you’ve never really wanted to commit. You have _always_ been welcome, but you’ve kept us at arm’s length. Even Clint. You’ve always had your own ideas about what’s best for us, and whether or not you’re it.”

Natasha bites back a retort, can’t really deny it despite her anger. The truth is, Clint’s left a hole in her life that’s far more vast than friendship or even love; it feels as though a part of her own identity is gone as well, and she’s not sure what fits in its place. She opens the box she’s holding, plucks out a fluffy pink flamingo ornament from Miami.

“I’m putting these up.” She hangs it on the front of the tree, halfway to the top.

* * *

The first time she sees the lightning, it’s snowing again. A real storm, this time, not quite a February blizzard.

She’s braving the wind to get more firewood from the barn, looks up as she hears the crackle of thunder overhead. The view is obscured by the snow, but she catches a few spidery flashes of red out on the horizon.

Nature, she thinks, is cruel.

* * *

The snow turns to rain in the middle of March, and suddenly it’s relentless. Natasha’s been feeling restless--the powers she’s sworn her allegiance to still don’t want to put her skills to use and she’s not doing much better on her own.

Cooper’s always been quiet, but now he’s spending most of his waking hours--and some when he should be asleep--in his room, wrapped up in books and his computer. He doesn’t want to talk, and Natasha can’t find a way to make any sort of conversation that doesn’t feel deceptive, doesn’t remind her of an interrogation. Lila’s gone in the opposite direction, is spending all of her spare time in the barn, practicing with the bow Clint gifted her on her last birthday, all but ignored up until now. She doesn’t want help, doesn’t want company. Not any company that isn’t her dad, anyway.

For her part, Natasha can’t find anything useful to do. She’s never expected to live long enough to retire, hasn’t ever really allowed herself to contemplate a civilian life, and now she feels stifled by it.

She cleans the house from top to bottom while Laura is working, tries to finish the dining room renovation Clint never managed to complete. She doesn’t have his touch for building things, though, and it all comes out feeling a bit off-kilter, still unfinished after she’s done her best. She tries half a dozen new recipes, though food is a small comfort at best.

Finally, Natasha chooses a piece of earth and decides that it’s going to be a garden. It’s been years since this land was used for crops or animals--since before Clint bought it, really. But the soil seems decent enough to her untrained eye, and digging it up feels good, feels like she’s doing something worthwhile as she presses the delicate seeds into the fresh ground. She plants tomatoes, cucumbers, and two different kinds of lettuce, hoping the birds won’t be too interested in any of those. She has a healthy crop of seedlings poking through the soil after a week, begins to feel hopeful as she keeps them carefully weeded. 

That all ends with the rain, though. The sky stays dark and heavy for more than a week, the earth thoroughly inundated with water and the sun a rarity. Suddenly they are all drowning again.

* * *

Natasha dreams of a city in the sky.

It isn’t Sokovia, isn’t any place she’s ever seen before. It’s peaceful--deserted, actually, but the buildings are well-maintained, painted bright jewel tones that seem almost iridescent in the sunlight. The ground is covered in a carpet of flowers, which smell sweet and simultaneously earthy.

A scream cuts through the air.

Fear surging through her chest, Natasha rushes to the edge of the city, catches her first glimpse of the land below. It’s covered in a seething mass of people, tearing one another savagely limb from limb.

She pauses a moment longer, takes a desperate look around at the safety of her perch in the clouds. She considers turning away from the view, considers simply staying here, then dismisses the thought.

Taking a breath, Natasha jumps--and wakes with a start in her bed.

Laura is asleep, doesn’t stir. Natasha feels sick, her heart pounding and her skin crawling. She feels instantly smothered, her body damp with sweat as she slips from under the blankets, finds clothes and shoes.

Outside, it’s finally stopped raining, though there’s a low growl of thunder on the horizon and the air feels charged. It’s warm and muggy, though the first day of spring hasn’t quite arrived yet.

Natasha takes off at a run, her pulse still roaring in her temples. She circles the perimeter of the farm once, then again, still feels as though she’s hanging suspended somewhere above the real world, unable to get back to it. After her fourth lap around the property, her lungs are burning and her legs feel like rubber, but she still isn’t ready to go back into the house. Instead, she collapses against the trunk of a tree, looking at the remains of her garden, washed out and filling up with weeds.

She isn’t sure how much time passes, but it’s still pitch dark out when she feels the instinctive prickle along the back of her neck that warns she’s not alone. Concentrating, she identifies the sound of quiet footsteps coming from the empty back half of the property, not the house or the direction of town. Natasha stays perfectly still, waiting. It could be a neighbor, or a visitor who’s lost. It could be someone with a medical emergency, in need of Laura’s help. She doesn’t think so, though.

Slowly, a silhouette emerges, just visible in the thin moonlight. The person is moving slowly, intentionally, clearly aware of Natasha’s presence as well.

“Hi,” she hears finally, and for a moment she’s absolutely certain she’s imagining it all, because it’s _Clint’s_ voice coming through the darkness. “Don’t panic. You’re not going crazy.”

Her breath catches in her throat and for an instant it feels as though the world is upside down, as if she’s still in the free-fall of a nightmare, unable to wake up and come back to earth. But she _is_ awake--she knows this because she’s spent years teaching herself to recognize the difference. She focuses on the sensation of the moisture from the ground seeping through the fabric of her pants, the roughness of the tree bark against her back, the way her calves burn when she flexes her feet. Definitely not a dream, then. It takes approximately half a second for suspicion to replace her shock once she’s reached that conclusion.

“Hard to believe, when I’m speaking to a dead man,” she says pointedly. She doesn’t get to her feet yet, doesn’t move, though she’s already forcing her exhaustion down, preparing for the possibility of a fight.

“You’ve been here before,” says the man, who she sure as hell isn’t ready to accept as _Clint_ yet. “With Fury.”

“Most of the dead men in my life _stay_ dead,” says Natasha. “So you’ll understand if I’m not especially convinced by the vocal tricks.”

The shadow sighs. “I need your help.” There’s a soft click that makes her tense, the beam of a flashlight blooming to life. And then it’s Clint’s _face_ in the shadows, older, more haggard, but undeniable.

She can’t trust it, she knows--she’s worn other people’s faces before. But she can’t help the fresh wave of emotions that surges through her, fear and anger, and desperate, traitorous hope despite it all. She stands quickly, crosses her arms over her chest like it might help her keep it all at bay.

“Prove it,” she growls, though she has no idea how he can possibly do that. Clint was closer to her than anyone, but that only furthers her doubts--a large part of her refuses to believe that he might be alive, might _have_ been alive this entire time without her knowing. 

He smiles, and there’s something impossibly soft about it in the dim light. “You hate coffee, but sometimes you’ll still drink it if you need to stay awake. Tea is your true love, especially when it’s scalding hot and you add an embarrassing amount of sugar. You love to read, but not electronically. Half the appeal for you is the smell of the ink and the paper. It grounds you.”

“Do better,” says Natasha, though none of it’s wrong. It just isn’t enough. 

“When I brought you in,” he says, “you asked me to kill you. And you asked me again, later, to promise that I’d go through with it if you ever lost yourself again. When you brought me in after New York, I made you promise the same.”

Natasha bites her lip, curses the thread of hope she can’t seem to quash, despite her better judgment. “Half of that is in my psych record.”

He moves slowly in the darkness, raises the hem of his shirt to show her the faded ghost of an old scar. “You gave me this, the night we met. You’ve got a matching one on your left shoulder. When Cooper was born, you disappeared for two months, and when I found you, you said you’d figured it was for the best. When Lila was born, you were the only one who could get her to stop crying.” He pauses, just holds her gaze for a long moment. “The kids call you ‘aunt’ because you don’t think you’ll ever be the kind of person who gets to be called _mom_. When you decided to back Registration, you apologized to me because you felt like you were tearing the family apart, that I’d be disappointed in you. But Natasha--I have never been as proud of anyone as I am of you right now.”

She moves in a rush when the reality of it all finally breaks through the wall she’s been trying to build around her heart, white-hot rage over the fact that he’s standing here now, alive, and making sentimental _speeches_ overwhelming everything else. She throws a vicious left hook at his jaw without a single rational thought, stops short when it connects and he stumbles backward.

For a moment they both stand there stunned, blinking at one another. Natasha sucks in a breath, can’t seem to speak around the ball of raw emotion in her throat. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so wholly untethered. 

“Okay,” Clint says finally, pressing two fingers gingerly to his cheek, “I deserved that. But I need your help. Come with me, please?”

The last thing she’s doing right now is letting him go anywhere without her, Natasha realizes. She nods, still wordless.

* * *

Clint leads her toward the back edge of the property, where the land isn’t regularly maintained. The trees here grow closer together, but it’s the grass that forms the real obstacle, waist-high and tough, the blades sharp and tangled together with other weeds. The whole mess has spent the last few months under a blanket of snow, and it’s frost-bitten in places but far from defeated. The brush here has been allowed to grow unchecked for as long as Natasha’s been coming to the farm, another piece of the barrier against the outside world.

It’s a challenge to push through now, on legs that feel like rubber, with only the beam from Clint’s flashlight to guide them, but they manage after a few minutes, reaching the edge of the road on the other side. An old blue pickup truck is parked there, and Natasha feels a prickle of apprehension skitter along the back of her neck at the realization that it’s probably been here the entire time she was running, that she hasn’t even considered the possibility that she might not be alone out here. Has she slipped so far already, in nine months?

“How long have you been watching me?” she demands.

Clint unlocks the truck, pulls the passenger door open and looks at her expectantly, waiting for her to get in. Natasha doesn’t move, just holds his gaze and lets the question stand.

He sighs. “Tonight, not long. Although you almost ran into me, a couple of times.”

“ _Tonight_?” she asks sharply, not missing the implication of that. Anger is still bubbling in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m--” He breaks off, takes a breath. “I had to be sure. That you were all right.”

“And what do you think?” she snaps, her throat tight again, the words burning. “ _Were_ we? Thinking you were _dead_?”

He winces, swallows audibly, which is the tiniest bit gratifying. But he doesn’t answer the question. “You can hate me, okay? This isn’t about me. Just--get in the truck, please? Let me show you.”

She doesn’t dignify that with a verbal response, hopes he can _feel_ the hatred in her movements as she pushes past him, climbs into the passenger seat and wrenches the door from his hand to slam it.

They drive in silence for a long stretch of dark road. It’s impossible to see landmarks out here, but she thinks they’re moving further away from town, out into an area to the north of abandoned fields, slowly being reclaimed by nature, the landscape punctuated by the occasional dilapidated house or barn. 

It still feels as though they’re in the middle of nowhere when Clint shifts the truck into park and cuts the engine. For a moment Natasha wonders if she’s made a mistake, fallen into some cruel trap after all.

Clint takes a breath, sits back in his seat. “I need you to be calm for this.”

Natasha huffs a laugh, a bitter, incredulous sound. “That’s it. There’s no way that this is real and you actually just said that to me.” It’s cool in the truck, rainwater and sweat drying clammy on her skin, and she wraps her arms around herself again, suddenly aware of how hard she’s shivering.

“Natasha,” he breathes, and the way that he says her name _aches_ in a place she can’t quantify. He reaches into the backseat of the truck, comes up with a rumpled windbreaker and hands it to her. “Here.”

She takes the jacket reluctantly and wraps it around her shoulders, tries to focus on her breathing. The anger is still there, still nauseating, but she can’t ignore the urgency in his voice, instinctively believes that there is a crisis here she needs to be prepared to handle. So she tells herself that this is a job, that she has to force the emotions down, find the manufactured place of calm that’s saved her life so many times before in the field.

“Okay,” she says after a few minutes that feel like an eternity. “What are you showing me?”

“Come with me,” Clint repeats. He gets out, opens the door for her.

Natasha follows him up an uneven path edged in matted tall grass. She recognizes the property in a rush as they get to the top of the walk and an old house comes into view.

“The Campbell place?” She asks. It’s abandoned, or so she’s thought. Now there’s dim light coming from inside, and even in the dark, she can see the places where the porch has been patched, obviously Clint’s work.

He nods, unlocks the door and motions for her to enter ahead of him.

Natasha had thought she was prepared for anything, in a place of pure strategy, beyond emotion. But now she finds everything pitched sideways again, the world off its axis.

The living room is patched up like the porch, sparsely furnished. And Wanda is sitting in the corner, curled up in an overstuffed, threadbare armchair, like it alone might be holding her together. Her hair is as unkempt as the grass outside, a sheen of sweat visible on her skin from this distance, though it isn’t warm in the room. And she is very much alive.

“You brought her,” says Wanda, not looking up. She sounds distant, almost as though she’s speaking in a dream. “She’s really here?”

“Yes,” says Clint, closing the door and carefully stepping around Natasha. “We need her help.”

Wanda is silent for a moment, though delicate, sparkling red tendrils dance over her fingertips, erupt at her temples before winding their way back through her hair.

“She is angry,” Wanda says slowly, and Natasha realizes with a jolt of panic that the girl is reading her thoughts, despite having promised never to do it again. That was when they were on the same team, though, and when Wanda wasn’t...whatever this is.

“He doesn’t need you to tell him that,” says Natasha, as calmly as she can manage.

“You didn’t tell her,” Wanda continues, looking up finally and fixing Clint with a thoroughly inhuman crimson stare. “You didn’t tell her you were alive.”

“I had to keep you safe,” says Clint. “We’ve talked about this.”

“She hates you now,” Wanda continues, and Natasha feels the eerily familiar pull of her powers, bringing all the most painful moments of the past year straight to the surface.

“Stop,” Natasha says sharply, her own voice sounding desperate, unfamiliar in her ears. 

But Wanda isn’t listening. “She always knew that she wasn’t going to be enough to keep you. She thought it would be your wife who took you away, or your kids, or the choices she had to make for her missions. But you kept insisting that you’d stay, and she started to believe you. Only now you _did_ leave, and it was a choice.” Wanda pauses, and for a moment everything feels absolutely, impossibly still. “She wishes that you _were_ dead. At least then, leaving wouldn’t have been up to you.”

“Enough!” Natasha snaps, the words a ragged defiance on her lips, her mind protesting anything but Wanda’s grasp.

It takes every ounce of her strength to turn and run into the night.

* * *

It’s full daylight by the time Natasha makes it back to the farm on foot, and the house is empty. She feels utterly drained, her mind still clouded, and everything hurts. She collapses onto the couch as soon as she reaches it.

Only then does she notice that she’s still wearing Clint’s jacket. Pulling it closer, she realizes that it smells like him, all the familiar scents she’s been so desperate to catch a hint of since he disappeared from their lives. 

Clutching white-knuckled at the fabric, she curls into herself and begins to cry, rough sobs that tear at her throat.

* * *

Natasha thinks about burying the jacket, or about burning it instead. She thinks about throwing a few things into a bag and hitching a ride out of town, disappearing from this world that doesn’t seem to have a place for her anymore.

She gives in to that idea, actually, glancing at the clock as she unearths the battered old duffel bag that’s sat at the back of the bedroom closet since her arrival last summer. Wanda’s words echo in her mind as she packs haphazardly, not even fully aware of what she’s taking. It’s true, all of it, but hearing the thoughts spoken aloud makes them sharper somehow, more monstrous. Which is why _she_ has to be the one to leave now, if only to prevent her mind from being taken from her again, her worst thoughts used as weapons against the people she loves most.

She makes it as far as the front steps before she’s stopped by the realization that there are dense black storm clouds rolling in on the horizon, the kind that tend to bring tornadoes. That isn’t what concerns her--Natasha couldn’t care less for her own safety at the moment, would almost welcome some sort of punishment from the universe, an escape from the hell she’s stumbled into here.

The thing that makes her freeze, rooted to the spot, is the lightning. It’s constant, almost, like a pyrotechnic display ahead of the clouds. It’s violent. And it’s red. The same display she saw in the snow, she thinks, only now she realizes that it’s coming from the abandoned Campbell farm. From Wanda.

Something is wrong with her, Natasha thinks. Something far beyond being overwhelmed by the turmoil of battle. If she’s losing control--or taking it--like Natasha witnessed last night, then Clint is right. He’s going to need help, won’t be able to continue managing on his own. If Natasha leaves, that will make Laura the next in line. Laura, who’s just begun to cope with losing her husband. Who knows what to do with the kids. Who’s been single-handedly holding this family together with her stubborn belief that goodness exists in the world. Natasha can’t (won’t) leave her to face Wanda’s darkness alone. But she isn’t ready to go back there yet either.

Sighing, Natasha retreats into the house and begins unpacking again as the tornado sirens go off.

* * *

Living on the farm, in what she assumed was relative safety, has made Natasha complacent. It’s painfully obvious, now, all the little signs she’s been missing.

Three days pass and Clint doesn’t try to approach her again, but that only serves to increase the tension that’s crawling just beneath her skin. Suddenly she’s on edge in a way she hasn’t felt in years, not even in the field. Every sound seems amplified, every shadow a threat lurking on the perimeter of her world. She wonders what his absence means--if he’s gone elsewhere for help, some old contact she’s written off, if the situation might be less dire than he’d originally suggested. Or--perhaps things are even worse than she’d thought. It’s possible, she realizes, that he may not be in need of help anymore because it might be too late.

She refuses to give that possibility much consideration, though, because that sort of responsibility makes her brain threaten to simply shut down. And besides, she’s pretty sure she’s seen the truck a few times, just driving by on the road out front, not making any attempt at stopping.

* * *

“Nat,” says Laura, as she comes down the stairs, the scent of coffee rich in the air, “when did you fix the roof on the barn?”

Natasha blinks. They only discovered the leak the previous afternoon, a patch of shingles torn loose during the latest round of storms. Now, as she moves to the window, she realizes that the blue tarp they spread over it is gone, dark new shingles standing out against the rest of the roof in its place.

A peace offering? She wonders, because it’s immediately obvious to her who’s done it. If it’s intended to placate her, it has the opposite effect, though, and another sickening wave of anger twists her stomach.

“I didn’t,” she says pointedly, then feels immediately guilty about it. She isn’t sure exactly what it is that’s prevented her so far from telling Laura that Clint’s alive. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s not sure how much longer he’ll manage to stay that way, given the situation he’s put himself in. Maybe it’s her anger, her desire to know that he’s feeling the same sort of helpless pain he’s inflicted on his family for the past year. Or maybe it’s simply her own weakness, her inability to process this, to find her role in any of it.

Laura is giving her _that_ look, the one that’s half skepticism and half sympathy. The one that says she suspects Natasha’s brain might be betraying her.

Natasha sighs, makes one more terrible decision. “Last night, apparently.”

* * *

Natasha is left with the baby after the older kids are off to school, because the sitter is busy today and Laura is working. It feels odd, still, being entrusted with such a fragile being, though this is years removed from the first time it happened.

Nate is an easy baby, a happy baby, as though he’s intentionally flying in the face of his namesake, she thinks. He definitely has his mother’s brightness, perpetually smiling and curious about everything.

The day is warm, so Natasha takes him outside for a walk. They stop by the barn first, so she can examine Clint’s handiwork on the roof. She has the nagging sense that things inside have been moved around, subtly straightened up, but she can’t be sure if that’s just paranoia. 

Then she steps back out into the sunlight, rounds the corner and freezes in front of the plot of land where she planted her ill-fated garden. The soil’s been turned over fresh, trenches dug carefully around the edges to keep the water out this time. And there’s a new crop of seedlings pushing their way through, pale green, neat rows. Clearly replanted.

“Clint?” she says softly, though she has no idea what she’s expecting.

Nothing happens.

* * *

When she wakes in the middle of the night this time, she knows somehow. Maybe it’s something she heard or saw, her subconscious putting together clues. Maybe it’s just intuition. 

She slides out of bed, pulls on her coat and shoes before heading straight to the barn. There’s a faint light coming from the inside, she sees from the front steps, but she’s also brought a flashlight of her own. She walks up to the doorway of the barn and switches it on, catches Clint frozen in the beam.

“Hi,” he breathes, after a moment, raising both palms toward her as if she might be the police. As if he might be a criminal.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, coldly, though it’s becoming increasingly obvious as her eyes adjust to the relative darkness--he’s here looking for the things he used to keep for developing new arrows. That’s all gone now, though. Laura cleaned it out weeks ago.

“I told you--” he begins.

“I know,” Natasha snaps. “You need help. Only _this_ is your idea of asking for it. Letting your family think you were dead? Going off the grid for a year? Sneaking around in the dark instead of owning any part of what you’ve done? Give me one good reason we should do anything for you.”

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t have done the same?” asks Clint, quietly. “You, the woman who ran when my son was born?”

“Yes,” she bites out, swallowing the sting of his words. “Yes, I am telling you that I _never_ would have put the people I love through what you did. Not now. I’d rather _actually_ be dead.” But she can’t stop thinking about the duffel bag, waiting for her in the back of the closet.

“Well,” Clint says bitterly, “you’ve always been good at telling the lies people want to hear.” 

Natasha lunges thoughtlessly and he dodges, easily prepared this time. “I ought to kill you myself.”

Clint laughs, not nicely. “Believe me, that would be a reprieve.”

She’s lost in anger, in pain, is about to make another pass at him when the sound of footsteps on the walk makes both of them freeze. Natasha turns, slowly, and Laura is standing there in the pool of light, studying them both with an intensity that makes her chest ache.

“You’re here,” Laura says finally, to Clint. There isn’t a bit of doubt in her voice. “I knew, somehow.”

His demeanor changes immediately, the anger fading in an instant, replaced by the same quiet sadness Natasha saw in him the first night he found her on the farm, and something she thinks must be shame. 

“I’m sorry,” Clint breathes, and it isn’t immediately obvious which of them he’s talking to. Then again, that might be the point.

It takes Laura a moment to respond. “I assume you have an explanation?”

He nods, but doesn’t volunteer it.

Laura turns to Natasha, and there’s a hard edge to her expression now. “And you?”

Natasha flinches, the guilt she’s been forcing off, rationalizing into submission rushing back in full force. She can’t tell if Laura thinks she’s been complicit in this deception from the start, but either way, it’s clear that she’s far from blameless, and she has no idea how to respond.

“I’m--” She breaks off. “I don’t.”

Laura glances back and forth between the two of them again, then sighs. “Come in the house.”

Clint hesitates. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. If the kids--”

“ _Come into the house,”_ Laura repeats, icily, each word harshly defined.

This time Clint just nods and follows her, Natasha hanging back a few paces just in case he gets any ideas about running again.

They end up in the dining room, because it’s practically sound-proofed thanks to the renovations Natasha completed. Clint shifts uncomfortably before perching on the edge of a chair, still looking distinctly unsettled. Laura sits opposite him, uncharacteristically quiet. Natasha considers, then decides not to join them, stands, leaning on the wall in the corner of the room instead.

“Talk,” says Laura, finally. “I’m not going to interrogate you. You owe me.”

Clint sucks in a breath, looks at his hands, then up at Natasha. “Wanda started having trouble--pretty much as soon as you left. Well, before that, even. Said it was the tension between everyone, all the hurts she could sense but didn’t want to share. She told me she felt like a match in a warehouse full of explosives, like if she said anything, it might blow the whole place into dust.”

“Poetic,” says Natasha, unable to keep the tone of resentment out of her voice, even knowing that it’s born out of guilt.

“Well,” says Clint, “ _you_ try seeing everyone else’s worst case scenarios. Might give you some dark thoughts too.”

“Wanda was having trouble?” Laura prompts, breaking in. The implication is clear: get back to the explanation. 

“She started losing control,” says Clint. “Couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t keep herself out of other people’s heads. And then the rest went, too. It wasn’t just seeing people’s thoughts or affecting their minds. It was physical, too. Things coming apart around her anytime she got upset, even when she wasn’t thinking about it. Even when she was trying not to.”

Natasha swallows hard, tries not to picture Wanda’s horror at the control slipping away. She might not be a mind-reader, might not have telekinesis, but god knows she understands what it’s like to be a runaway weapon, to hurt innocent people despite trying your best to be _good_. She tries not to think about the promises she made to Wanda--to teach her, support her, make sure nothing like this ever happened. She tries not to remember that she walked out on all of that, when she’d decided that being a leader had to mean something different.

“And you took her into combat like that?” asks Natasha. Because it’s easier to focus on responsibility that isn’t hers.

“No,” says Clint, his tone edging back toward irritation. “She took herself. She made a choice. Nobody told her what to do.”

“You knew she was unstable,” Natasha insists, because it’s suddenly become crucial to prove that the blame belongs to someone else. “You knew what she was capable of, that she was losing control. And nobody stopped her from coming along?”

“Put yourself in our position,” says Clint, angry again. “Were _you_ going to be the one to tell her no, all things considered?”

“This is exactly it,” says Natasha, throwing up her hands. “ _This_ is why we need oversight. Because decisions like that--decisions that affect whether civilians _live or die_ \--should not get made by default.”

“Stop,” Laura breaks in, and suddenly Natasha realizes how loud this conversation has gotten. “I saw the reports. She took out a full city block, including herself. So how about telling me why we’re discussing this now? What it has to do with where you’ve been?”

“Because she didn’t take herself out,” Natasha says flatly, watching that piece of news sink in.

“It was an accident,” says Clint, and there’s something akin to desperation in his voice. “She had no control over what she did, but people died and I--I knew that was all anyone else was going to see.”

“So you took her off the grid,” says Natasha, still watching Laura as she speaks.

Clint blows out a long breath. “I took her off the grid. Ross’s men wouldn’t have stopped until they put her down. I didn’t see a choice.”

Silence hangs in the air for an unbearably long moment before Laura speaks again. “And why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you find a way before now? Or were you actually just looking for a way out of your family?”

Clint drops his head into his hands, makes a pained noise. “I’d already given up my life. No point dragging anybody else along.”

“Until now,” Natasha says bitterly. “Because, shockingly, it turns out you _can’t_ actually contain the compromised Enhanced girl all on your own. So now we’re all complicit too.”

He scrubs a hand over his face, then back through his hair. “Like I said, hate me if you want. It’s not about me. Wanda needs our help.”

“But it _is_ about you,” Laura says slowly, like she might be trying to explain something to the kids, after a fight, “when the decisions you make affect your family.”

Clint seems to deflate at that, all the certainty going out of his posture. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I should go.”

He gets as far as standing before Laura blocks his path, hand on her hip. “Who said that’s what I want? Or are you making another decision on behalf of all of us?”

“I thought--” He breaks off, looks back and forth between Laura and Natasha, utterly lost. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Okay,” says Laura, and now she’s the one who seems self-assured, the balance having shifted between them. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’ve been incredibly selfish and short-sighted. I also think I’m really glad to have you back, even though I’m angry. And I think that if you’ve got a sick Enhanced girl in isolation, then the first thing she’s probably going to need is a doctor. I happen to be the only one available at the moment.”

Clint blinks. “You want to see her? Now?”

Laura nods. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”

He hesitates, then apparently seems to think better of it. “Yes. _Yes_. Just--I need the rest of the night, okay? It isn’t a good idea to surprise her.”

“That’s an understatement,” says Natasha, and he winces.

Laura considers for a moment longer, then simply nods.

* * *

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asks Laura, when she comes back into the house. She’s spent an interminable ten minutes outside, seeing Clint off after he’d insisted on the need to get back to Wanda sooner rather than later. Their conversation wasn’t loud enough to overhear, even with the kitchen window open, though she didn’t miss the way Laura hugged him at the end, lingered in his arms like the past year’s ordeal hasn’t left any distance between them at all.

Natasha turns away from the kettle, which seems to be taking an unreasonably long time to boil. “I only found out a few days ago.”

Laura crosses her arms, laughs without any hint of mirth. “A few days. Well, that explains why you’ve been weird. I thought maybe you were bored, getting ready to move on.”

“Laura--” Natasha begins, trying to ignore the way that accusation hurts. Of course Laura’s noticed the change; she’s the most incredibly perceptive person Natasha has ever met.

“Why didn’t you tell me _immediately_?” Laura interrupts. 

“I don’t know,” Natasha says again, helplessly. “I didn’t--know what to do.”

“Right,” says Laura, openly angry now. “You expect me to buy that? Don’t insult me, Nat. You _always_ have a plan. So what was it? Were you ever going to tell me? Or were you going to help him disappear again? Maybe this time, you were planning to go along.”

“Stop,” Natasha hisses, channeling the rage into iron-clad control, because she absolutely refuses to wake up the children with this. “Stop. You _know_ me better than that. You know I would _never_.” She breaks off, swallows down bile as guilt and adrenaline threaten to turn her stomach. She didn’t know how to articulate the truth before, or maybe just wasn’t ready.

“You know why I didn’t tell you?” she asks, forcing the words out past the ache in her throat, as though all the pain of the past ten months is sitting on her chest, on her vocal cords. “I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted--I loved him. I loved him in ways I never thought were possible. And losing him--It was hard. I don’t think even _you_ know _how_ hard. But it meant something. It meant he’d died doing the thing that made me love him in the first place. And now--all of that turns out to be a lie. Turns out to be one more person I thought I could trust, gone.”

The change in Laura is palpable, anger draining away until there’s nothing left but the hurt and sadness, and something Natasha suspects might be pity.

“You thought he died trying to help someone who needed him,” says Laura, her voice quiet, resigned now. “Which is one of the things you _love_ about him. Now it turns out he’s still alive, still _doing_ that, and you’d prefer that wasn’t true?”

Natasha sets her jaw defiantly. She’s grown accustomed to this moment--the one where someone who’s been deluded into seeing her as some kind of hero realizes their mistake. “Sounds about right.”

* * *

Natasha spends the night lying awake on the bed in the guest room, staring at the ceiling. Laura hasn’t actively banished her from the master, would probably tell her that she’s still welcome there. But Natasha can’t deny the way things have changed, are still changing.

“Get up,” Laura calls from the doorway as the sun starts to climb toward mid-morning in the sky.

The kids will be in school, Nate with the sitter by now. It’s well past time to be on with the day, but everything feels hollow, artificial. She doesn’t question the order, though, dresses quickly and heads downstairs to find Laura waiting by the door. Preparing to go see Wanda, Natasha realizes belatedly. Her instincts are off today, her mind dulled by exhaustion and emotion.

“Let’s go,” says Laura, all business, and Natasha hesitates. She hasn’t been picturing herself included in this, isn’t prepared, but of course she should be.

“And if I don’t?” she asks, bristling.

“Then I’ll take that to mean you no longer want any part in this family,” Laura says simply, and is out the front door before she’s had any chance to respond.

Laura has the truck halfway down the drive by the time Natasha has managed to swallow her pride and run after it. She stops, though, waits for Natasha to climb in, feeling like a chastised child.

They’re halfway to the Campbell property when Natasha finds the energy to speak again. “What exactly is the plan here?”

“We find out what Wanda needs,” says Laura. “And we do our best to get it for her. That’s _my_ plan, anyway.”

“You haven’t seen her,” says Natasha, apprehension overpowering again. “She’s a liability.”

“Maybe,” says Laura, “but from what I’ve heard, we need to stabilize her before we can decide that.”

“And if you can’t?” asks Natasha, driving toward the answer she wants, the target.

“What do you want me to say?” asks Laura, apparently seeing straight through that tactic. “You want me to say that we’ll turn her over to Ross? Or that _we_ should take her out?”

Natasha shrugs, staring straight ahead at the road, the clouds of dust that are rising from the ground, finally dry.

“Is that what we should have done with _you_?” Laura presses, coming in for a kill shot of her own. “When Clint brought you in? I seem to recall that you were a considerable liability too.”

Natasha smiles darkly. “Maybe you should have.”

* * *

Clint meets them at the edge of the property, directs Laura to park behind some rotting bales of hay. Natasha is struck by how thin he looks in daylight, the lines of his face sharper, more angular. He looks more exhausted than she’s ever seen before, and for a moment her mind strays to the thought of what it must have been like, having sole responsibility for Wanda for the past year. She wonders how much of it Clint’s spent lost in nightmare visions, how much of him that’s eroded away.

“You’re not coming in this time,” he says to Natasha, before she’s managed to speak.

Natasha blinks, the sense of betrayal fresh again. It’s not that she _wants_ to face Wanda and her powers again right now, but the dismissal hurts all the same. “Why?”

Clint raises an eyebrow. “You want a repeat of last time? You’re still angry. It’s written all over your face. She can probably feel you from here.”

“Fine,” Natasha breathes icily. She climbs back into the car and slams the door, so she can’t hear what he says to Laura. She doesn’t miss the way they look together, though. A calm, united front, no place for her sharp edges and vitriol.

* * *

One visit to Wanda is all it takes for Laura to decide that they are going to need reinforcements. Wanda can’t be left alone for any significant amount of time, and Clint can’t continue being subjected to the instability of her powers without reprieve, which means they are going to have to take shifts. Nobody asks Natasha to contribute time to the effort, and she doesn’t argue. 

Fury arrives three days later, on a morning that’s so deceptively dewy and perfect it seems nearly impossible for anything dark to exist in the same world. Natasha is sitting in the kitchen window, feeling directionless when his small jet arrives, like a silent, sleek ghost of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s past. Laura is at work, the kids in school, so it falls to Natasha to greet him, to take him out to Clint and Wanda. She sighs, dumps the lukewarm mug of tea she’s forgotten into the sink before heading outside.

“Well,” says Fury, when he reaches her on the porch steps, “my life just wouldn’t be complete without you kids causing trouble, now would it?”

Natasha manages to muster an eyeroll and half a smile as Fury moves to hug her. “Well, here I was getting concerned that you might be enjoying your retirement.”

* * *

The Campbell property is just under fifteen minutes from home, no traffic on the old dirt road, but Natasha has already decided it’s the longest ride she’s ever taken. Which is impressive, considering.

Clint is silent in the passenger seat, having taken Fury’s place for the ride back. Natasha still hasn’t seen Wanda again, opted to stay in the car as instructed last time, so she didn’t hear their conversation. She knows Laura has sent a load of supplies with Fury, including trial doses of several different kinds of antipsychotics and sedatives. The medication won’t control Wanda’s powers--Natasha knows S.H.I.E.L.D. did similar experiments, back in the early days of the Avengers Initiative--but maybe if she can control her mind better, the rest will come along.

“The kids will be glad to see you,” Natasha concedes, when she can’t take the silence any longer. If she thinks too much about how worn he looks, she’s going to lose track of her anger, going to start wanting to fix things for him. And that is far too dangerous for her to afford.

Clint blinks, turns to look at her sharply, as though he might have just woken from some sort of dream. “Do they know?”

Natasha pauses, surprised that he and Laura haven’t had this conversation already. Then again, it’s not as if they’ve had much opportunity. “No. That’s on you.”

Clint blows out a long breath, nods. She can’t quite read his expression through the gulf the past year’s left between them.

“Okay,” he says finally, voice rough with an emotion she still can’t quite identify. “Okay, I can do that.” He doesn’t sound convinced.

* * *

Clint spends the afternoon holed up in the bedroom, sleeping, Natasha assumes. She feels suddenly claustrophobic, hyper-aware of his presence. She putters around the living room and kitchen for a while, straightening things up, before finally escaping onto the porch. She curls up on the rocking chair, forces her mind to get lost in a book as the sun reaches its zenith, then sinks down on the horizon again. Finally, when it’s gotten too dark to read, Natasha weaves her fingers in among the book’s pages and half-closes it. The crickets and the cicadas are beginning to sing, punctuated by the occasional low voices of frogs. There’s no wind tonight and the air feels heavy and stale.

It’s fully dark by the time Laura pulls up with the kids in tow, and at some point the lights inside the house have been switched on, though Natasha’s lost track of when that’s happened. She stays perfectly still in the rocking chair, draped in shadows, and the others walk right past without registering her presence.

Natasha turns as the door closes, watching through the big front windows as Clint meets the kids in the living room, beaming like it’s Christmas morning, like they haven’t been crying for him for months.

For a moment, everything seems to stand still, on the brink. Lila breaks first, running across the living room and flinging herself so hard at Clint that it’s a wonder he doesn’t lose his balance. Instead he catches her, lifts her up for a hug. Natasha can’t hear what they’re saying, but she doesn’t need to. The tears on both of their faces are enough.

And then she notices Cooper, not running or smiling. Instead he’s quiet, his eyes dark. He lingers at the bottom of the stairs, looking lost, before fleeing in the direction of his bedroom.

In this moment, Natasha thinks, she has never felt quite so close to him.

* * *

Natasha stays in the guest room, stays on the periphery. The house is still too quiet, oddly tense as the days creep by. In a strange way, it reminds her of the weeks after the war first ended. Nobody was talking then, either, just clinging stubbornly to some semblance of normalcy.

Fury is spending most of his time with Wanda now, though Clint and Laura take regular shifts too. Nobody is talking about her at the house; nobody is talking about her to Natasha. For his part, Clint might as well be a ghost, present in body, going through the motions. It hurts to watch, so Natasha does it as little as possible, though she can’t say whether that’s because he’s changed or because he _hasn't_ , though everything feels different anyway.

Mostly, she feels lost again, unneeded by the people she’s come to depend upon for a purpose.

* * *

Waking to the sound of someone’s weight landing on the creaky stair four from the top ought not to be surprising. The house is full these days, and full of people who don’t rest easy.

Still, it’s jarring, and she can’t deny the way her heart is pounding, adrenaline singing in her veins. She takes a breath and rolls over, tries to force her mind back into quiet. Only a fitful sleep comes, though, filled with dreams of a flood, of being trapped on a rooftop with helicopters buzzing the skies all around, unwilling to come down and rescue her.

Natasha can’t say how much time has passed when she wakes fully enough to move again, rolls over and switches on a lamp to banish the lingering grasp of the nightmare. The guest room she’s using is a decent size, but suddenly it feels too small, confining. Abandoning the idea of sleep, she gets out of bed and heads for the kitchen with a half-formed thought about chamomile tea.

She makes it as far as the bottom of the stairs on autopilot before she stops short, taken aback by the sight of Clint, sitting with his head bowed over the kitchen table, the room dark except for the light pouring down from her open bedroom doorway. He looks up, pauses, seems somehow as surprised as she is. For a moment she considers retreating back up the stairs or fleeing the house altogether, but both of those options are ridiculous. She hasn’t sunk that low yet. Instead she forces herself to cross the room as she’s been planning, fills the kettle with water and sets it on the stove.

“Natasha,” Clint breathes, finally, and the way that he says her name threatens to break through the dam of numbness she’s been building up around her heart.

She searches instinctively, finds the anger in the deluge and latches on. “Can’t sleep?”

He shakes his head, worn thinner than she thinks she’s ever seen him. Which is saying something, considering.

Natasha gives him a precise, cruel smile. “Good.”

He flinches visibly at that but says nothing, makes no move to defend himself. There’s absolutely no satisfaction in the blow she’s just landed, anger ebbing into grief as the kettle starts to sing. Her hands shake a little as she gets out a mug and tea bag, then thinks better of it and grabs a second of each.

Clint looks up again when she sets the steaming tea on the table in front of him, meets her gaze but says nothing.

* * *

The next time she seems him, Clint is in the barn with the kids. Lila is practicing with her bow again, now subtly upgraded, Natasha notices, and she wonders for a moment where he found the time or energy for that. Cooper is bent over the table they’ve set up as a miniature lab, soldering something together with a dexterity he’s definitely inherited from his dad.

The children don’t seem to notice as Natasha walks by, on her way out to the field for a run. She doesn’t miss the way Clint jumps, though, instantly on guard at the sound of her footsteps.

* * *

Laura comes home late, after midnight. Natasha is sitting up in the guest bed--three weeks sleeping here and it still doesn’t feel like her own--reading a book when she hears the front door followed shortly by the familiar footfalls on the stairs. It isn’t terribly unusual for Laura to finish work at odd hours--she’s one of only two doctors for miles around, after all--but tonight Natasha senses that something is different. Something is wrong.

Natasha slips out of bed, moves silently to the door, listening to Clint and Laura talking in muffled voices, sound drifting over from the bedroom where she belongs.

“How is she?” asks Clint.

“The same,” says Laura, sounding tired, even at a distance.

Clint’s voice again: “I should go see her.”

“No,” Laura says sharply. Too sharply. “Nick and I have it covered. You need to be here. The kids need you to be here.”

Clint sighs loudly. “She’s getting worse.”

Laura is silent for a long moment, hedging. “She’s more volatile. It’s not just the powers anymore. It’s--she doesn’t always know where she is. Or who we are.”

“And the meds?”

She can practically see Laura shaking her head apologetically. “Risperdal didn’t work.”

There’s another moment of silence, the sound of someone sitting heavily on the mattress, which creaks. 

“Then what’s next?” Clint asks finally.

“We move to Haldol,” says Laura. “If that doesn’t work, we might need to consider true sedatives. Propofol, maybe.”

“And do what?” Clint’s voice rises dangerously for a moment before he realizes, gets it back under control. “Are we going to keep her comatose? Indefinitely?”

“I don’t know,” Laura says helplessly. “I don’t know. Maybe Nat was right.”

Silence, after that, and the sound of the wind outside.

* * *

“Anything you want to tell me?” Natasha asks, cornering Laura in the dining room the next morning. Clint is in the kitchen with the kids, making pancakes like it might be an ordinary Sunday.

Laura raises an eyebrow, hands Natasha a stack of napkins and gestures for her to fold them for the place settings. “I don’t know.”

Natasha runs a thumbnail along a sharp triangular fold, sets the napkin at the head of the table they haven’t used in months. “I heard you last night.”

Laura shrugs. “I figured you did.”

“And were you planning on telling me any of that?” she insists, feeling absurd as she watches Laura calmly arranging silverware. “Were you planning on bringing me in on the very real threat you’re trying to contain a few miles away?”

“No,” Laura answers matter-of-factly. “Not until you decide to stop putting your anger first. Because, right now, _you_ are a liability too.”

Natasha takes a breath for a retort, stops short as the kids pile into the room, carefully placing the food on the table. Clint follows a moment later, the baby on his shoulder.

All of her instincts are screaming at her to run away, defend herself, but she’s spent weeks in that particular purgatory now. And then Lila is there, taking her hand with a painfully naive smile, and there’s nothing to do but follow.

* * *

The sun is just starting to drop toward the horizon when the sirens go off. Natasha jumps, unnerved by the sound--there’s been absolutely no hint of a storm so far this evening. But all at once, everything seems to explode into action, the wind kicking up as Laura comes rushing down the stairs, scooping things into her bag.

“Get in the basement now,” she orders, already halfway to the door.

“Wait!” calls Natasha, getting to her feet. She’s been sitting on the couch, absently watching the kids play on the living room floor. “Where are you going?”

Clint’s already been gone most of the evening, and everything feels wrong, off-kilter.

“To see a patient,” says Laura, and steps out into the wind without waiting for a response. As she forces the door sut behind her, Natasha thinks she catches a crackle of red against the heavy underbelly of the clouds.

* * *

The sirens don’t stop.

They’re all, in a way, accustomed to storms after years of living out here. Even the kids normally find some sense of calm with the toys and games they keep in the basement. But this storm isn’t normal; half an hour passes and the wind is still screaming like banshees, loud enough to hear under all their cover.

Cooper is focused stoically on a game on his tablet, but Lila is clearly anxious, moving restlessly from one thing to the next before finally curling up in Natasha’s lap, fingers curled into the hem of her shirt.

“Do you know why daddy left?” she asks, out of nowhere. 

Natasha tries not to flinch, thinks sardonically about little girls and unexpected barbs. “He’s helping your mom with one of her patients.”

Lila wrinkles her nose, undeterred. “That’s not what I meant. I meant _before_. When you told us he wasn’t coming back.”

Natasha sighs, takes a breath. She considers lying, knows that won’t help anything. “You know your dad--he’s a hero, right?”

Lila nods. “Like you.”

Natasha swallows down the urge to argue with that. “He saves people, whatever it takes. And this time--This time, there was a person who really needed to be saved, but in order for your dad to do it, he needed everyone to think he was--gone--for a while.”

Lila considers this for a moment, seems to accept it and nods. “Is he gonna go away again?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says, unable to keep the sadness out of her voice.

* * *

It’s late by the time the storm’s quieted and the kids are in bed. Exhaustion is humming through Natasha’s veins, still mixed with apprehension. Things are still now, but she knows better than to think that means safe.

When she gets back downstairs, Clint is sitting at the kitchen table, soaked to the bone. He has a bottle of Jack out on the table, is knocking back a shot of it when she walks into the room. She freezes, frowns. He doesn’t drink ordinarily, avoids it except on special occasions.

“Where’s Laura?” she asks, momentarily afraid.

Clint shakes his head. “Still with Wanda. I should be there too.”

“Is she okay?” Natasha presses, though even she isn’t entirely sure who she means.

“Yeah,” Clint breathes, pouring another shot and downing it immediately. “Now.”

“Then what--” Natasha breaks off as she realizes, the situation suddenly clear. “Wanda was in your head tonight.”

He nods, does a third shot. Suddenly she realizes what’s been bothering her about his behavior the past few weeks, aside from her anger over his disappearance. He’s acting the way he did after New York, after Loki. Apparently this is the way he acts when he doesn’t entirely trust his grasp on his own mind.

Clint moves to pour yet another shot, and Natasha snatches the glass away. “Stop.”

“Natasha,” he begins exasperatedly, “I don’t--”

“Stop,” she repeats, grabbing the bottle too. “Let me help.”

He has no reason to trust her right now, she knows. She’s given him nothing but cause for anger and suspicion lately. Still, he doesn’t question it further, doesn’t fight it, just nods and looks to her for direction. For a moment Natasha feels paralyzed by the familiar doubt, the voice in the back of her mind that tries to insist she could never be any good at caring for another person, is insane to even try.

“Get up,” she tells him, deciding staunchly to ignore her misgivings.

Clint does as he’s told, slightly unsteady between the exhaustion and the alcohol, but he manages to follow her up to the bedroom without incident. Natasha pauses again before finding a dry set of clothes and handing them over. She’s painfully aware, as he ducks into the bathroom to change, that she hasn’t been in here for weeks, has all but abandoned it as a space belonging to her. It’s different, somehow, than the long absences that have come in the past from work.

“What now?” asks Clint, when he returns, looking at least slightly less pitiful.

“Lie down,” says Natasha, still keeping the edge in her voice between them, “before you collapse and I have to scrape your sorry ass off the floor.”

“Sleep isn’t gonna happen,” he says wearily, but he slips into the bed anyway, the particular intimacy of that act hanging in the air between them.

Natasha moves uselessly around the room for a few minutes, straightening things up. She knows that she isn’t about to turn out the lights or leave him alone, knows what she wants to give him, in spite of everything. Finally she steps out of her shoes, stretches out on her side along the center of the mattress, and gingerly finds his hand among the folds of the sheets. Clint sucks in a breath, turns his head to face her on the pillow.

“I’m sorry,” he says, very quietly. “I _am_ sorry. For all of this.”

Natasha swallows, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “I know.” That has never been a question in her mind, anger notwithstanding. 

“I wish you’d never had to find out,” he admits. 

Natasha can’t help it--her whole body stiffens instinctively. It’s all she can do not to forcibly push him away. “Yout hink _that’s_ what I’m angry about? Not that you let me think you were dead, but that I found out it wasn’t true?”

“No,” he says helplessly. “I’m not--Look. It’s not that often that I get to do anything that really counts these days. Not since S.H.I.E.L.D.--Not since New York, really. You don’t need me. You haven’t for years, Nat. You’re amazing. You’re a hero all on your own. And so is Laura, in her own way. But Wanda--In Berlin, when it happened, all I could think was that she needed me. _Really_ needed me. Her brother already died so that I could be here. This was--I didn’t have a choice.”

The pain in his voice is palpable, practically seems to radiate off of him, and Natasha has to fight to avoid being stifled by it. “Helping Wanda? I _get_ that. I might have even done the same thing, given the opportunity. What I still don’t understand is why you didn’t tell us, when you could.”

“Like I said,” he breathes, voice rough, “you didn’t need me. It was never about you being enough for me. It was about me trying to do what was best for all of you.”

“You’re an idiot,” says Natasha, though it’s not like she’s able to muster much conviction. “Of course I don’t _need_ you. But I do love you. And I would have given _anything_ to keep you in our lives.”

Clint chokes for a moment, clears his throat before he finally manages to speak again. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I knew--When I made the decision, I knew I was giving up everything I had with you.”

“Idiot,” she repeats, tears hot on her own cheeks. She can't find the anger anymore, no matter how she searches, can’t see anything but a reflection of her own convictions, her own mistakes, when she looks at him. “You _idiot_. If that were true, then what the hell do you think I’m still doing here?”

Clint gapes at her, then covers his face with his hands, making a noise that’s half a laugh and half a sob, all desperate hope. She lets him breathe like that for a moment before she takes his hands and pulls them away, rolls over so that her arms frame his face, and kisses him deeply. He makes another helpless, needy sound in the back of his throat and shifts them so that he can hold on with all of his strength, her entire body enveloped in the warmth of his.

“God, I missed you,” he whispers, forehead pressed against the side of her neck.

“ _You_?” says Natasha, though all she feels is relief. “I hope you know that I’m still going to kick your ass.”

Clint laughs, a genuine sound this time. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

Natasha slips a hand up underneath his shirt, rests her palm over the place where she can feel his heart, beating wildly.

* * *

The road out to the Campbell house isn’t barren anymore, is flanked with the lanky stalks of wildflowers that have sprung up practically overnight in the wake of the storm. Natasha is reminded suddenly of her dream on the night of Clint’s return, can’t quite help wondering if it was somehow more than a simple coincidence.

“I need to do this alone,” she tells Clint, when they arrive. She hasn’t made that particular decision until this moment, but suddenly knows it’s true.

He hesitates, then nods, settling back in the passenger seat.

Fury meets her on the porch, smiling. “I was wondering when you’d be making an appearance.”

“Clint says it’s time for decisions to be made,” Natasha tells him, ignoring the implication. 

Fury nods. “Ms. Maximoff will become a danger to civilians again, if she continues on this trajectory. Though the sedative seems to be working, temporarily. It should be safe for you to talk with her.”

Natasha nods. “So what are our options?”

He considers for a moment. “Aside from turning herself in? S.H.I.E.L.D.--what’s left of it--has containment facilities for Gifted individuals. That’s probably her best hope, if she wants to stay under the radar.”

Natasha nods again, then reconsiders. “And why does it need to be me having this conversation with her?” She’s been avoiding it for far too long, she knows, has her own responsibility to Wanda that she’s been neglecting, but she still wants to hear Fury’s explanation.

He just smiles again, maddeningly inscrutable. “Last time I checked, you _were_ her mentor.”

* * *

Wanda is in the bedroom now, Natasha can see from the light shining down the hallway. She hasn’t been further than the living room before, and now she lingers, taking in the subtle warmth of the place, the time Clint must have taken to build it back up into a space that feels safe.

In the bedroom, Wanda is curled up on the narrow mattress, shivering under a pile of three blankets. Natasha lingers in the doorway and steadies herself, clears her mind of all thoughts save what she needs to accomplish here. It won’t be enough, she knows, if Wanda truly loses control. But she isn’t going to let that happen.

Taking another breath, she crosses the room and sits on the chair beside the bed. “Hello.”

Wanda turns to look at her, and Natasha sees the familiar ring of red that colors her irises during a fight, now seemingly permanent. “I didn’t think you’d be back.”

Natasha smiles, sadly. She’d expected this to be harder, somehow. Still does, if she’s being honest with herself. “I didn’t either.”

“Then why are you here now?” Maybe she hasn’t looked for herself, or maybe she just wants to ask the typical human way.

“To apologize,” says Natasha, then reconsiders. “Well, no, not entirely. I _am_ sorry for leaving you. And for taking so long to come back here now.”

“But you’re not sorry for siding with Stark,” says Wanda, and for a moment Natasha feels a hint of her icy-fingered power, creeping down the back of her neck before subsiding again.

“I’m not sorry for doing what I thought was right,” says Natasha, swallowing down her apprehension. She will not be afraid of this any longer. “But that doesn’t mean that I think you deserve to die, okay? We failed you. All of us did.”

“And what are you doing now?” Wanda asks bitterly, turning her head back to stare up at the ceiling. 

Natasha reaches out defiantly, rests a hand on her arm. “We’ve all been trying to protect you. Everyone’s been so worried for you that I don’t think anybody’s thought to ask what _you_ want. I’m here to tell you that you have choices--but going on like this isn’t one of them.”

Wanda is silent for a long while before she turns again, fixes Natasha with a gaze filled with so much sadness that it practically breaks her heart without any sort of magic at all.

“All I have ever wanted was to be _good_.”

* * *

They take Wanda to D.C. on the first true day of summer, to meet with General Ross at her own request. She’s medicated heavily, but the most lucid Natasha thinks she’s been in months. Clint is there too because, as he’s pointed out repeatedly, he isn’t about to let Wanda take responsibility without him, isn’t going to keep running once she’s turned herself in.

Natasha’s been trying to steel herself for days, to accept the fact that she is about to lose him again in a whole other way. That this is what he needs, a flawed part of the man she has the incredible misfortune to love.

In the end, Clint never gets the chance.

“I made him,” Wanda tells Ross, and she repeats it stubbornly until she is heard, until she’s managed to negotiate her surrender in exchange for Clint’s amnesty. “He had no choice.”

* * *

“It isn’t true,” Clint tells Natasha later, as they board the flight home that was an impossibility just a few brief hours ago. “Her powers affected me when she lost control, but she didn’t _make_ me do anything. I was the one pushing her to stay off the grid because I thought I knew what was best. I thought she didn’t.”

“I know,” says Natasha, finding his hand beneath the ridiculous airline magazine that’s spread open on his lap and squeezing it tightly. “I know that. She knows that, too. But--It’s like you said. Wanda made this decision for herself. She didn’t want to drag you in too. And this? This was her gift to your family. Don’t you dare squander it on guilt.”

* * *

Laura is in the kitchen when Natasha walks in, cleaning up from breakfast. They’ve called ahead to fill her in on the news, but the relief on her face is still obvious.

“Hi,” Natasha breathes, crossing the room and kissing her lightly. She owes Laura at least a half dozen apologies still, but there will be time for that now. She plunges ahead. “I want you to know--I gave Ross my resignation yesterday.”

Laura’s eyes widen slightly; this is new information to her. “No more Avenging?”

Natasha sighs. “There hasn’t been any real Avenging in a year and you know it. But--my priorities are here. Just here. Not sitting around waiting for the government to call. I’ll find some other way to make a difference. A real way.”

Clint walks in before she can respond, comes over and wraps an arm around Natasha’s shoulders, keeps it there as he leans over to kiss Laura.

“Hey,” says Laura, when she pulls away from the two of them, “Nat was just telling me things are going to be changing around here for us.”

Natasha smiles, swallows the odd lump in her throat. “I mean, when are they not?”

Laura laughs softly. “Touche.” 

Clint moves to the coffee pot, gets halfway through his usual routine of pouring water and adding grounds before he pauses again. “So--That’s it? We’re just--starting over now? Just--us?”

Laura snorts, a hint of her usual lightness beginning to break through the tumult of the past few months. “There has never been anything ‘just’ about either of you and there never will be.”

* * *

Later, Natasha finds him out in the barn, aiming an experimental arrow at a hay-bale target.

“Still practicing?” she asks, from the doorway.

He lowers his weapon as she comes closer, smiling sheepishly. “Only a few things I’m sure of right now. This is one of them.”

“And the others?” asks Natasha.

Clint says nothing, just sets his bow on the ground and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her in as close as he can. “Here’s another.”

Natasha curls her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. In that moment, everything is still and warm.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback makes my day! :)


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